"He probably likes his product but does not believe its useful for everyone. This is why would he would be surprised to see a million downloads that soon."

This is obviously a load of crap. 600K downloads in 48 hours? How would he be surprised to see a million downloads soon?

Heh... one day after the story about PR firms, and we're still discussing this?

This is a friggin' press release for god's sake. The CEO is not surprised about anything. This whole outrageous statement was no doubt just a plan to stir up attention. And no guarantee that Opera didn't pay to have this story published in Slashdot anyway.

Posted by Zonk on 08:51 AM -- Friday April 29 2005from the friday-morning-swim dept.Viggeh! writes "An overly excited Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software, today drowned off the coast of Norway after promising to swim to America if Opera managed a million downloads in its first four days. Everyone at Opera is quite sad, but they promise Opera 8.1 will have even more features because that's what he would've wanted. He leaves behind 7 computers, a wife, and 2 children."

Din't you read this?: with only one stop-over for a cup of hot chocolate at his mother's house in his home country, Iceland.

He's an Icelander. He's one of the guys who grew up reading things like Njal's Saga, playing with his friends at being Gunnar or Kári and beting each other with wooden swords, playing with snow outside at some -10C and under blizzards and getting his head messed up with the perma-summer-light/almost no light seasonal cycle.

If one of these guys says he's swimming accross the Atlantic, I'd advise to my good american friends to lock themselves in their houses and get ready for a raid.

Ah, ah,We come from the land of the ice and snow,from the midnight sun where the hot springs blow.The hammer of the godsWill drive our ships to new lands,To fight the horde, singing and crying:Valhalla, I am coming!On we sweep with threshing oar,Our only goal will be the western shore.

Ah, ah,We come from the land of the ice and snow,from the midnight sun where the hot springs blow.How soft your fields so green,Can whisper tales of gore,Of how we calmed the tides of war.We are your overlords.On we sweep with threshing oar,Our only goal will be the western shore.So now you'd better stop and rebuild all your ruins,For peace and trust can win the dayDespite of all your losing.

"Eyewitnesses have reported a Microsoft corporate jet in the area where von Tetzcher was last seen. According to one witness, the jet descended to just above sea level, and dropped a largem ferocious-looking fish with some sort of optical device attached to its head, into the water".

...my internet connection at home is down, and I don't have administrative priveleges on this box (I'm at work). Oh well, maybe I can download it a few times anyway, if they don't have the site blocked...

Can anyone tell me why, exactly, the "direct link" to download Opera from Slashdot points to the Windows version ?

Because this gives a lot of posters getting positive moderation by pointing out this fact, giving a link to the general download page (the latter is almost guaranteed to get +5 Informative) or maybe even by making fun of it.

"I don't think there is a chance in hell of our getting a million downloads in four days, so I will make this grandiose gesture knowing full well I will never have to put up on it - much like the Taco Bell/MIR offer.

However, I will use this PR stunt to get lots of free advertising from lazy reporters who are too stupid to figure out how I am using them."

This is an interesting, and likely successful, publicity stunt. But aren't the waters of the North Atlantic, you know, balls cold? And doesn't the gulfstream tend to flow, you know, the opposite direction?

First, the Gulf Stream doesn't extend that far north. Take a look at the wiki [wikipedia.org] for it.
However, if he were swimming against it (instead of north it and perpendicular (roughly) to the current of the North Atlantic Drift), he'd be lucky to make any headway at all. The average speed of the Gulf Current is around 5 knots (or is that nauts? I've never been sure which is correct). Now, I've done a mile swim numerous times-- I was on swim/dive as a kid-- and I KNOW it takes me about 18-20 minutes to swim an imperial mile. Considering a nautical mile is even longer, I really doubt I'd make any progress swimming against that current! Take that & multiply by however many miles it is from Norway to Maine... I don't even want to imagine trying.

He'll choose a 'Norway' other than the country if they hit the download mark.

Burma-shave had a contest in 1955 to send someone to Mars (whoever was first to send in 900 empty jars of Burma-shave). An enterprising grocery store owner in Wisconsin took up the challenge and called the company's bluff.

Burma-shave ended up sending him to Moers, Germany for a nice vacation.

http://www.snopes.com/business/market/mars.asp has a writeup, for anyone feeling nostalgic.

I don't see a point... I bet a lot of people will just download it just to see him swim. Then later uninstall it. I'll do that tonight. I wanna see if he holds his words.

Ooo wait... maybe Bill Gates will do something better so that people will keep IE. I could see it now. "Bill Gates jumps pit of acid and a large tub of sharks with laser beams attached to their heads (and it was on fire)."

The point is it will get a lot of people to at least try it out. Opera is convinced they have a superior product, by pulling a stunt like this many people will download it to support him swimming across the ocean, and in all likelyhood they will try it out.

Yeah, I'm waiting until Sunday. Don't want another man's death on my conscience. On the other hand, if I really cared about the guy I'd organize a DOS attack or something to keep other people from downloading either. Hackers for Life or something.

All he has to do is get on a cruise ship with a swimming pool that is going from Norway to the USA. And he can swim in it 24x7. So technically he is swimming from there to here. That way he doesn't have to worry about things like hypothermia, sharks, giant squid, icebergs, polar bears, or being attacked by a creche of killer penguins.

In case anybody is wondering - of course that cannot be done. While the atlantic ocean has been swum [didyouknow.cd], it was done by swimming six hours a day in two hour intervals (and took almost 80 days). And the person who did it was a highly trained swimmer, not a corporate CEO.

Also, going via Iceland might be a bad idea - since in the north atlantic he will freeze to death without a dry suit. And try surface swimming six hours with a dry suit some time...

Only did a dry-suit dive once (just for the experience of the suiting up proceedure,etc) and since they can act as a flotation device (especially wiht the warm fuzzies underneath) it shouldn't be much of a problem... Hands, feet, and face will be awful cold though.

Why not something realistic, like shaving his head or swimming say, the English Channel? That's only a tens of miles and yet swimming in the ocean (away from the shore) is SO hard that people die trying to swim just that far. No one can or will ever swim the Atlantic without major help from medicine or technology.

It's so much tongue-in-cheek that it stops just short of saying outright "yes, it's a joke".

Then again, it's very refreshing to see that a corporate PR department can still get away with cheap shots at the CEO. Choice quote: "However, having seen Jon in his red beach attire before, I am not sure if swimming to the USA is scarier than exposing people to this sight."

I went through the site, saw the screen shots...What is the difference between this and Firefox? I'm not too familiar with this thing called Opera, I've only watched it here and there. What makes it worth the $40?

It is. Contrary to Slashdot popular beleif, it IS possible to get a great product by paying for it.

Opera is one of them. Sure it seems 'bloated' at first, but most of it is because of lots of little toolbars that you can turn off and never see again within 4 seconds. And even with all this "bloat", it seems to be a lot snappier than Mozilla Firefox. And there are lot of little gemstones around the program that you keep discovering the more you use it. Some of these gem's you'll love and start using on a regular basis (one example of mine was the "drag over a non hypertext URL and right click it and choose "Go to URL"), and others that annoy you (The totally unnecissary chat client) you can turn off and never have to bother with again.

And if the thought of banner ad's for the unpaid version feaks you out, you can even switch the ads to a Google AdWrods bar that's a lot thinner than the standard banner ad....and I know I sure as hell don't mind AdWords, even on webpages.

Give it a try. I've been using the free version since 6.xx, and every time I've tried any other web browser, I've always wound up coming back.

Ah, here you need to think, "out-side-the-box," as my dear managing friends with their minds stuck in dreams of the '90s would say.

You see, during his trip, he is surely to begin to drown. At this point, a beautiful mermaid will rescue him, and take him to a wonderous city under the sea. Here, not only will he learn true love and the meaning of Christmas, but he will also learn the secret to world peace.